George Jonas: ‘Whatever happened to strong and free?’

Having escaped from both fascism and communism, George Jonas is in the perfect position to write:

I’d celebrate the day police officers ran into some bad attitudes while pulling over taxpayers to enforce the latest, and possibly most arrogant, government intrusion into their lives. If Canadians actually believed that smoking in their own vehicles shouldn’t be a police matter in a free society, there would be hope for Dalton McGuinty’s corner of the Canadian Reich — but I’m afraid the freedom train carrying such beliefs left the station a couple of generations ago.

One day, historians may view our society as an anomaly. Canada fought long and sacrificed much for freedom– then gradually adopted the philosophies and practices of the dismal societies it defeated.

Canadians, who used to offer their lives for liberty, now offer their liberty for a modest increase in life expectancy: Seven years, on average, for non-smokers.

I don’t think cops need to worry. What used to be the true north strong and free, the land of voyageurs, explorers and coureurs de bois, has become a sheltered workshop, a veritable happy farm of multicultural sheep and their sheep-shearers.

(…)

People no longer believe they have a right to smoke–or speak, crack a joke, own a pet of their choice, or wish each other Merry Christmas — without approval from Big Nanny. Canadians whose fathers and grandfathers fought fiendish despots to defend their freedom and independence have surrendered, without firing a shot, to the social engineers of the liberal-fascist state.

(…)

But being around isn’t the most important thing. The important thing is to be around as a free person. It’s possible to combine the two, but unless we choose the second whenever a choice needs to be made, we won’t enjoy the benefit of the first. Smoking is deadly, but it’s not a patch, not even a nicotine patch, on the deadliness of tyranny.

Oppressive laws should be challenged, not respected. There are times when good citizenship requires civil disobedience. Every human right, every constitutional protection, comes from an irate citizen snapping one day and saying: Enough! A bad attitude to arbitrary authority is the bedrock of liberty.

***

Of course, Canadians (and people throughout the Western world) have made themselves hostages. This goes beyond Stockholm Syndrome: those over-studied hostages didn’t volunteer to be held at gun point, after all.

We paid to get into the scary movie, of our own free will, and are now complaining, ever so quietly, that we don’t like it very much. It really is a miserable spectacle.

Perhaps the economic downturn will have a liberating effect. I know I never felt free-er than when I got dumped over a year ago. My husband’s rarely been in a better mood. Neither has a friend of mine who was unceremoniously dumped and replaced by an unpaid intern.

No more having to listen to cubicle-mates fantasizing aloud about shooting George Bush, or fussing about an imaginary one-degree increase in the world’s temperature (as if that would be a bad thing to begin with) and scolding their stubbornly non-recyling colleagues.

No more of the now hopelessly feminized modern office, with its endless time-sucking birthday parties and goodbye parties and welcome parties and Christmas parties and “let’s show total strangers what my uterus looks like” parties. Not to mention all the time off granted to this one to try on her wedding dress or that one to go home to blow her baby’s nose.

Ah, you say: “but what about my pension?” Snort. Maybe you haven’t read the papers lately.

“What about my benefits? I can’t afford to be fired for saying ‘Merry Christmas.’ I can’t afford to lose them…”

Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come to choose between your childrens’ crooked teeth and your childrens’ crooked minds.